Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb by Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Author:Jeffrey A. Kroessler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

“The City”

Stein hoped that he would play a major role in developing housing policy in Washington and that the garden city would become the official goal. In that, he would be disappointed, even though Frederick Bigger, a founding member of the RPAA, was in charge of the greenbelt program. Stein and Wright were brought in as consultants for the new towns program of the Resettlement Administration, but Stein did not gain the commission he had hoped for (his reluctance to relocate his practice to Washington was perhaps a factor). After meeting the architects for Greenbelt, Maryland, Stein wrote with exasperation, “The plans were unpardonably wasteful. They had nothing to do with low-cost housing. They were the result of the architect’s desire to have every American live like a king or better, a suburban bank president.… We finally had to rip into the plans.” Even though he had only a peripheral role, Stein could not accept such misguided designs. “The possibility of building Garden Cities means too much to me [to] let the whole thing be set back because the first ones are so extravagant that they become the laughing stock of all practical builders.” He owed it to “the memory of old Ebenezer Howard.” When he revisited the site a year later, he exulted, “They have the beginnings of a Garden City! If old Ebenezer were only here to see it.”23

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